


past, present, future

by monstermash



Series: caine, take the wheel [2]
Category: Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Video Game)
Genre: Minor Character Death, Multi, like very minor character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-02-01 18:12:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12710253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monstermash/pseuds/monstermash
Summary: A lot of things in life happen in threes, whether they're large scale events or the smallest of coincidences that barely have a connecting theme.(Andy's noticed the pattern even before he saw his last sunset.)





	1. Chapter 1

He wakes a couple hours before noon.

All is quiet save for the muffled sounds of L.A. outside the small apartment, but that’s not what woke him. No, Nines’ loud dreams roused him from sleep. The man himself is silent, but his brow is furrowed and his fingers twitch like he’s trying to grab something.

Andy knows what it is, what the other man is dreaming of.

Nines is dreaming of when he used to ride the rails when all the money seemed to disappear into thin air and storms of dirt ruined everything they touched. As one of the oldest of a gaggle of siblings and cousins he’d had to leave his family behind, chasing after work and to alleviate some of the stress on his mother and aunts.

First Angelo and Freddy left, then Victor, and then him.

(He closes his eyes and presses his forehead to Nines’ and listens to the impossibly loud dreams.)

Nines, before he became Nines, rode the freights to Florida first, hearing that there was work there, but found none at all upon arrival. Though to say nothing good came out of it wouldn’t be the truth; he’d made friends with Charlie, a girl who cut her hair short and dressed like a boy so she could get work and send money back to her family.

They watched each other’s backs, slept in shifts to make sure none of the others tried to steal their shoes or what little money they had, and shared the food they’d manage to scrounge up. It took the sting out of being alone, reminded Nines of what it felt like to be around family.

They looked out for one another, two kids trying to survive what seemed like the collapse of everything around them.

Until the winter of ’36, a year after Nines left home and 10 months after he and Charlie decided to stick together.

The train was pulling out of the station and they were running through the thick snow trying to catch up; they’d overslept and they couldn’t miss this train to California, it would be weeks before another one would be heading all the way there.

Cold seeping in through their cracked boots and holey socks, heaving breaths coming out in pale clouds around their red from the cold faces. They had to get into a freight car before the ledge that led hundreds of feet down to the frozen river below. He hates catching on the fly, it’s always dangerous.

His numb fingers manage to get hold of the handle of an open freight car and swing himself up into it. After getting a good grip on something, he can’t remember what, he leans back out, hand outstretched.

“C’mon Charlie!” he hollers and she tries, she really does. Their fingertips graze the other’s but the train is picking up speed and the cold is making her legs numb and she’s pushing herself to go faster.

A few of the others in the freight car are starting a commotion about the drop off coming up fast, but he won’t pull himself back into the car, not without his friend, not without Charlie.

Her fingers finally catch on his hand and he thinks he’s got a good grip but then suddenly the ground is gone from underneath her and she slips through his fingers as one of the older guys grabs him by the scruff of his shirt and hauls him backwards into the car to keep him from falling too.

But he sees her. 

Sees her plummet to the frozen river below, sees the fear in her eyes as she goes, and _Christ_ it feels like he’s got a rock caught in his throat because he can’t speak, can’t breathe--

(That’s enough of that memory, Andy decides. Would’ve pulled him out of it sooner, but the first and only time he’d tried had only made it worse, made the memory deafening.)

Andy runs his fingers through Nines’ hair and hums, trying to get the sleeping man’s breathing to even out, because while they may not technically need to actually breathe anymore, hyperventilating still isn’t any fun when you’re dead.

He curls tight around the other man, pressing his mouth against the top of Nines’ head. Andy looks at the dresser on the other side of the room, where he knows there’s a locked wooden box in the top drawer filled with the few things Nines allowed himself to keep from his life before.

Andy’s never opened it, won’t invade the privacy of it, but he already knows what is inside of the box.

The most notable are a grainy photograph of his family, an old rosary that belonged to his father, and a blue hair ribbon that had belonged to the girl who fell from the train.

(“I want you to hold onto this for me until I can be Charlotte again,” she had said.)

But she never would get to be Charlotte again.

He knows Nines wonders if she was ever found in the river, if her family ever knew she died and curses himself for never finding out her family name so he could send them a letter (send them the ribbon) to let them know that she wouldn’t ever be coming home.

He knows that Nines blames himself for it still; for not waking up sooner, for not getting a better grip on her hand, for not being able to give her ribbon back, for her not being able to be Charlotte again one day.

It’s an old hurt, one that won’t ever really heal because every now and then Nines will pick at the scab of it, as if he’s afraid that if he doesn’t that he’ll forget Charlie, afraid that he’s the only one who still remembers the girl.

“Don’t forget her,” Andy whispers as he smooths down bed mussed hair, “but don’t bleed yourself dry picking at scabs.”

\---

In the early evening he rises and sets about making food for his strays (it’s always breakfast things, and he can’t remember why he can’t bring himself to make anything else. The voices in his head offer no answers. Well, no answers that he can make sense of and that’s saying something right there) and he isn’t surprised when a pair of arms wrap around him like an octopus, thumbs rubbing circles on his hipbones.

“Y’know, one of the perks to not really being alive was _not_ having to cook,” a drowsy voice says, “Though I don’t think I can complain. Forgot how good fried potatoes smelled.”

Andy hums in acknowledgement. A few quiet moments stretch on, the only noticeable sound being the sizzling from the pan.

“Thank you, by the way. For what you said earlier,” Nines says so quietly that Andy almost misses it. “I appreciate it, but it won’t make the guilt go away just like that.”

“I didn’t expect it to. Old pain is the hardest to let go of and even then it never really goes away.”

Comfortable silence descends on them once more, until Nines curses under his breath as he untangles himself from Andy.

“Shit, I’m late. Told Hank I’d open the bar today and he won’t let it go if I don’t show up.”

“Let the damsel of distress know I’ll have the names of the circling sharks for her later tonight.”

“You know she hates it when you call her that,” Nines says from the bedroom, but there’s a smile in his voice.

“A candy heart with a 'fuck you' on it,” Andy replies with a fond grin.


	2. Chapter 2

If Samantha had known that he’d go missing, just disappear into thin air, she wouldn’t have left him alone.

It had been late in the summer, a night out on Sunset Strip with their friends, going from one bar to another, all of them buzzed and giggling at nothing and everything.

Andy had been in the middle of drunkenly telling her a joke when he stopped suddenly, the smile on his face replaced with a look of concern.

“What?” she asked, trying to fix her bleary gaze on whatever it was he was seeing.

There was a woman, dark hair up in a ponytail and heterochromatic eyes, who looked ill, deathly pale like she was about to keel over, staggering and swaying down the sidewalk. And of course Andy – bless his too kind heart – had decided to help her without a second thought.

Samantha followed after him (their friends trailing behind her to see what was going on) as he made his way to the woman who was now leaning heavily on the side of a building. When she got close enough something suddenly felt… _off._ Samantha couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but it felt like cold fingers dragging down her spine.

“Are you okay? Do you need help?” Andy asked the lady as he tried to get a good look at her face (probably to check her eyes, see if she might’ve been drugged or something).

“Help?” The woman finally looked up, eyes going from glassy to clear like she had an epiphany of some kind. “Yes, I could use your help.”

The way she worded that made Samantha uncomfortable.

“Andy,” she said, gripping his upper arm, making him look at her. “Let’s call her a cab and go.”

“We can’t leave her like this, she can barely hold herself up. I’ll stay with her until the cab shows up and then I’ll catch up with you guys.”

Samantha opened her mouth to protest but was cut off by Tiffany yelling “Come on, let’s go!”

“Go on,” Andy nudged her towards their friends with a smile. “I’ll catch up, I promise.”

She gave her best friend a look before reluctantly heading back towards the group. 

“You better, Andy Hart! It’s my party and I’ll have my way,” she yelled teasingly at him.

“Don’t have too much fun without me, birthday girl!”

And that was the last she saw of him for _months,_ him standing there with a goofy grin on his face, left alone with that strange woman.

Then he was just _gone,_ like he had never existed at all.

\---

Samantha wasn’t too worried at first, when he never joined them at Whisky a Go Go after helping out that strange woman. She figured he decided to call it a night and head home. 

She wasn’t too worried when she didn’t hear from him the next day; she thought he was probably sleeping off a hangover even though he hadn’t been drinking much that night.

She started to worry when he didn’t show up to work on Monday. Samantha tried calling him but all she got was a _“This number is not available right now”_ so he probably forgot to charge his phone again. During her lunchbreak Samantha stopped by his apartment to make sure he hadn’t choked on his own vomit if he really did have a hangover. 

He wasn’t there.

His place looked exactly as it had when she picked him up on Saturday night, so he hadn’t even been back since that night.

 _Okay, no need to panic. Maybe he’s over at Tiff’s, or Oliver’s,_ she thinks to herself.

She calls all of their friends on her way back to work. No one has seen Andy since Saturday.

 _Maybe he just came into work late._

No such luck.

Their boss is a little upset that Andy hasn’t come in yet because it’s so unlike him to not at least call in ahead of time if he’s sick or something, but he’s willing to let it slide this time. When her shift is over Samantha heads to all the places Andy volunteers at.

 _He’s gotta be here,_ she thinks to herself at every one she checks.

Animal shelters, homeless shelters, food banks, everything. None of them have any idea as to where he could be.

There’s a rotten feeling in her gut as she tries calling him again to no avail. How does a 24 year old man go missing without a trace?

Samantha checks his apartment one last time but he still hasn’t returned. 

She ends up at a police station filing a missing persons’ report.

\---

It’s been a month and there’s still no sign of Andy.

Samantha still stops by all the places he volunteered at just in case he shows up there.

Her and their group of friends pack up his belongings and move the boxes into a storage unit she’s rented and Andy’s apartment is put up for rent by the landlord.

(The landlord – an elderly woman by the name of Mrs. Packard – tells Samantha that she’ll call her if Andy shows up there. “I hate to have you pack up his things, but I need to put this place back on the market. It’s really a shame; he was one of my favorite tenants.”)

It’s been two months and it feels like she’s the only one still looking for him.

Marcus or Gigi might look with her every now and then, but it frustrates her that they’ve given up so easy.

(“You’re not the only one affected by this. We all miss him, but it’s been months! He’s probably dead by now!” Tiffany yells at her. Tiffany’s eyes go wide with horror at what she’s just said. “Oh my god, Samantha, I didn’t mean that!”)

It’s been three months and most of her (no, _their,_ because they’re still Andy’s friends too because he’s not dead) friends have given up. They may not say it out loud, but Samantha can tell.

It’s been four months and Samantha is still looking for her best friend and the hopelessness is setting in hard, but she’s not giving up on him, she won’t, even if it kills her.

\---

It’s been four months and a week when she finally finds him.

She thinks that maybe the stress of it all has finally cracked her, but there he is, walking right by her in front of Cavoletti Café.

“Andy.”

He stops and looks at her and he looks so different but the same.

“Andy,” she repeats, voice cracking with relief and tears threatening to spill over, “Andy, where have you _been?”_

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at her with heterochromatic eyes that he didn't have four months ago.

“I—We’ve been looking everywhere for you since you disappeared that night.”

He remains silent and it’s just too much.

“Why won’t you say anything?”

“My tongue is tied in constrictor knots,” he says, and Samantha knows that something is wrong, a creeping unease worming its way into her heart.

She tries to get him to come with her back to her apartment with no success. It occurs to her that maybe he doesn’t remember her, maybe he injured his head somehow and that’s why he’s acting strange. Andy assures her that this isn’t the case, but she doesn’t believe him.

“I have to go, the Cemetery Man has a pest problem,” Andy tells her in that weird new way of his, but hands her a scrap of paper, “but you can reach me here.”

He turns to go and fear wells up inside her as she reaches out and grabs his sleeve. Andy smiles reassuringly at her and gently removes her hand, squeezing it once before letting go of it.

“Why the long face?”

“I… I’m afraid you’ll disappear again.”

“Broken down on memory lane, but tomorrow night went on without me. I vanish when the sun comes up and rise with the moon. You’ll see me again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i would've posted this chapter sooner but i had to rewrite it a lot and this is the version i'm happiest with


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so there's roughly 3 chapters left. this one kinda got a little out of hand.
> 
> (i still don't like heather cuz she still makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but i always hope that once she parts ways with the fledgling that she is able to get back on track with her life, so there will be a chapter later where she does. mostly because i feel a little bad since she gets the short end of the stick in the game)
> 
> but yeah, i stayed up way too late writing this so i'm gonna go crash now i'll edit mistakes later

She slips in and out of consciousness for what seems like an eternity, the stench of blood and the distinct smell of disinfectant that hospitals always seem to have making her nauseas.

Heather Poe was not having a good night. It was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and now she was pretty sure she was dying in some emergency room.

She remembers asking one of the nurses to call her grandma when she was first carted in here, but she doesn’t know if the nurse heard or not. She can’t focus, the buzz of the irritatingly bright florescent lights is making her head pound and throb. There’s a sudden surge of tears and a hollow tightness in her chest as she thinks of her parents who have been dead for a long time now and how before the night is over she’ll probably be joining them in whatever kind of afterlife there is.

There’s a brief respite from the aching bright lights when a face with curious two-colored eyes enters her line of sight.

“Death has you by its teeth,” the man says as if Heather is a puzzle he’s trying to put together, “You’ve got a future in front of you, but the music is sad, it’s no longer rooted in its cage.”

 _What a weird nurse,_ she thinks, her vision going hazy.

“Please,” she rasps with a wet rattle deep in her chest, “Please, get a doctor.”

“The broken will be mended.”

And then he’s gone.

The cacophony of multiple phones ringing and chatter over the PA system lull her into a dreamlike state. Nothing seems real, but it is, it really is.

Heather is in the middle of accepting that she’s going to die alone in this hospital room when the weird nurse comes back.

“Drink this,” he tells her and holds something up to her mouth, but she’s so out of it that she can’t even really see it. “It will carry your hurt away.”

Heather drinks and she drinks deeply despite the metallic tang.

After a moment or two the nurse pulls the drink away (oh god, is that his wrist? What the hell is going on) and she’s breathing heavily. The nurse grabs a towel and runs it under the sink’s tap before he begins to wipe away the dried and crusty blood from her hands and neck.

“Your flesh mends.”

There’s a low buzzing and ringing in the back of her skull, the fog of death leaving her mind only to be replaced with a fog of another kind, but it isn’t terrible just odd. She looks – really looks – at the man and he’s not wearing scrubs like the nurses and doctors and now she’s even more confused.

“You… Wa—who… wh-who are you? Are you a volunteer?” Heather asks because she just wants this to make sense. “What did you do? What did you do to me?”

“I lessened your pain, righted a wrong in the making. Death is not your destiny tonight.”

“But you did something.” Because he did, she knows he did. Her mind is humming, a song in her veins, and she doesn’t know why, she just wants it to make sense. “I-I-I kissed your wrist… I can feel it inside of me. What did you do?”

He rises from the stool he’d been sitting on and moves back to the sink to rinse out the blood stained towel. The man sets it on the counter to dry and turns to look at her, a reassuring smile on his face.

“Some things are best forgotten. Wash me from your mind.”

Her heart is twisting in her chest as she looks into his mismatched eyes and Heather feels drawn to him, like he’s got some sort of magnetic pull.

“You – I feel like I know you… like you’ve always been here.” Heather can feel a smile tug at her lips the longer she looks at this man, the hollow tightness in her chest mixing with something fluttery and _oh,_ she thinks, _this must be love._

He laughs and his nose scrunches a little bit as he grins.

“No, I haven’t,” he tells her, “I only helped anchor the song back in its place. Hopefully it won’t try to wander away this time.”

And then he’s out the door and gone into the night.

\---

Heather can’t stop thinking about him. Ever since he saved her life and then left she’s just had this ever present need to see him again, to be near him.

She wanders the streets of Santa Monica every night despite her grandma worrying about her, asking her to just stay in rest, looking for her lover. Lucky for her she manages to find him one night, but she doesn’t approach him, just follows from a distance.

After that that’s how she spends most nights, waiting outside his apartment and then trailing after him as he goes about his night. She still doesn’t know much about him other than the fact that he lives above a pawnshop and that he’s ethereally beautiful. 

Oh and that she’s pretty sure he’s a vampire.

She watched him drink someone’s blood in an alley. Fangs sinking into flesh, but he doesn’t drain them dry, he never does, and then with a whispered suggestion sends them on their way. Usually though he seems to get blood from a blood bank. 

There are spider silk thin whisperings in her mind, encouraging her to want him.

 _(He’ll keep you from being lonely,_ they say.)

More and more she finds herself wanting to help him, to watch over him, to run her fingers through his dark curls as he sleeps.

\---

Heather starts sending him unsigned love letters.

She thought about leaving them in his mailbox, but decides that she doesn’t want to wait for him to possibly check for mail (he doesn’t always, she’s observed. Some nights he comes and goes without ever sparing a glance to the mailbox) so she leaves them in front of his door. She’ll knock and then rush down the hall and around the corner and wait for him to check.

(He opens the door, pokes his head out and looks down. He stoops down to pick up the letter and opens it. He looks confused when he finishes reading it. _But that’s okay,_ she thinks. _He’ll understand eventually.)_

\---

There are a few times where she can’t follow her love for a couple of days, her grandma’s worry growing too big.

Every time she returns to trailing after him it’s like he’s made a jump in a whole new direction and she’s scrambling to keep up.

The first time she’s gone for two days and when she comes back he’s looking happier than she’s ever seen him.

(Something in her chest twists painfully because she knows _she_ didn’t cause that.)

The second time when she returns she can’t find him anywhere in Santa Monica. It’s then she finds out that he’s changed his routine, that he’ll go to downtown L.A. to a bar called the Last Round or he’ll wander the streets for a bit, but he always meets up with the same person. Some man with pale grey eyes who always looks like he’s ready to fight someone with the way he carries himself.

(They walk and talk and laugh and joke for hours, they get to know each other the way she’s dreamt of getting to know her love and she seethes, because her love belongs to her, she wants all of those soft, genuine smiles to be directed at her and only her.)

The third time and she decides to follow the pale eyed man. Heather wants to know what it is her love sees in him. Bitterness is her companion that night and the other nights she follows this man.

(There’s a wriggling uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach because she’s losing her love to this man and she doesn’t know how or why. She needs to do something to win her love back.)

(She doesn’t realize she never had her love to begin with.)

\---

Heather starts to leave presents for her love along with the still unsigned love letters.

The gifts range from small shiny trinkets to expensive things.

Each time she sees the confusion on his face, but doesn’t recognize the apprehension and discomfort for what they are.

She’s getting frustrated because she hasn’t made any progress and it’s all because of that man from L.A. Heather decides that she’s going to confront him, get him to stay away from her love.

So down to the Last Round she goes, but he isn’t there. She decides she’ll wait, he always comes back here eventually.

After a while the bartender tells her to order something or get out and she can’t leave until she’s gotten the pale eyed man to stay away so she orders a drink.

And then another. And another. And another.

She orders more until she’s lost count and track of time and when the man does show up she ends up vomiting.

And then the next thing she knows she’s in a cab back home to her grandma.

\---

She’s unable to go to her love for a few weeks and there’s a gnawing ache the entire time.

But she can’t go, the eyes are watching her and she can’t make them stop.

\---

Heather’s finally found a gift that will surely win over her love.

About an hour before sunset she lets herself into his apartment, dragging her gift in through the door as silently as she can. She leaves the fish in the bathroom, locking the door by placing a chair under the doorknob. Giddy with excitement she sits on the edge of his bed and watches him while he sleeps, carding her fingers carefully through his curls.

Heather watches with adoration as he wakes with sleepy smile.

The smile drops immediately when he sees her. (She chalks it up to surprise.)

“I went fishing today… and I caught a big one,” she tells him with glee. She grins when she hears the fish waking up and banging around a bit in the bathroom. “Can you hear him flopping around? That’s how you can tell he’s fresh. I’m Heather, by the way.”

His hand closes around her wrist and he pulls her hand away from his hair as he sits up, a strained look on his face.

“No, no, no, no, no… fish travel in schools! Where is it?”

 _He doesn’t like it,_ she thinks, absolutely stricken. She thought that this would be the perfect gift, showing her love that she can provide for him.

“You don’t like fish? I-I just thought, you know, it’d be a nice change of pace if you dined in for a change.”

Her love looks pained and uncomfortable as he gets up from his bed and heads towards the bathroom, towards the fish. He unhooks the chair out from underneath the doorknob and enters the bathroom. She can hear him talking to the fish and then the fish is storming out of the apartment.

After a moment her love exits the bathroom and rubs his hands against his face, sighing heavily and he looks tired and stressed and she hasn’t made him happy at all.

“Why do you keep coming back? I never asked for you to stay.”

The words sting and an intense _something_ wells up within her.

“I just want to be with you, but you keep straying away from me.”

“You’re only drawn to me because of the blood bond, it acts like a leash, but it can be broken with time and distance. You need to go home, go back to your life. Eventually all of this will be like a bad fever dream.”

“I don’t care; I don’t want to be away from you! All I ask for is to hold your heart, to keep it.”

Something in him seems to snap at her words. He stays where he is by the bathroom door, but his usually kind face twists into one of anger and frustration.

“You can’t possess someone like an object and call it love! I’m not a thing to push your misguided affections on because you’re lonely,” he yells, one hand gripping his hair tightly as he breathes harshly through his nose.

After a few quiet moments, he looks at her with guilt and regret in his eyes and she feels her heart starting to break.

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice barely above a whisper, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. I know it’s my blood that is making you behave this way and that is my fault.”

There’s a brief moment where she has total clarity and it feels like it’s the first time in weeks. She feels horror because of what she’s done, she’s essentially been stalking this complete stranger for weeks now – oh god, she _broke into his apartment after she chloroformed another stranger and abducted them_ – and he’s apologizing to her for _her_ creepy behavior. And yeah, he is responsible for the way she’s behaving, but he’s not responsible for the actions she’s taken.

They’re both at fault here and she needs to apologize too.

But then an insurmountable amount of hurt pushes up from her ribs.

He doesn’t want her.

He wants the man from L.A.

She lets that sink in for a long, awkward few minutes.

“What is he to you?”

“That is none of your business.”

She scowls and gets up from her seat on his bed and storms out, determined to get answers. If not from him then from the man at the Last Round.

\---

She’s crying as she leaves the bar, as she leaves behind the man her heart still yearns for. She wants to stay, to follow him always, but she realizes that it’ll only hurt her and him if she continues to do so. Heartbreak and loss sit heavy behind her ribs.

Heather Poe gets in a cab and heads home to her grandma, determined to follow the man’s advice and get back to her life, because he certainly doesn’t want her in his.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> probably the shortest chapter. i rewrote this one a lot but none of them felt right so this is the final result (i also just really don't wanna look at/rewrite this chapter any more.)
> 
> i wanted to keep non-ghoul Heather kind of a mystery as to what she's like, but i also wanted to give her if not a happy ending then at least a hopeful ending that she's able to move on with her life because she definitely deserves the chance at both because the way i see it she kind of got the short end of the stick in the game.

Getting her life back on track wasn’t easy, and if she said it was she’d be lying through her teeth.

Her grandma was glad that she was back, that she was making an effort, but in the beginning there were a lot of nights where Heather would find herself back in Santa Monica without even realizing it until she would find herself standing across the street from the pawnshop.

At that point she’d force herself to keep walking past and at times it was physically painful but she had promised herself and the man (even if she never said it out loud to him. She didn’t go near him after that night in the bar) that she would stay away and work towards her future.

(A future without him and it still hurts her to think of it, even though a future with him had never been in the cards for her anyway, she knows that now.)

On the nights she finds herself in Santa Monica she goes to the pier and rides the Pacific Wheel or the West Coaster or the Pacific Plunge until her mind clears, until she no longer feels the need to be around the man, the urge to follow him.

During the first two months she always feels sick, like she’s going through withdrawal and it’s probably the worst she’s ever felt. 

But it’s also the best she’s ever felt.

Heather doesn’t feel paranoid anymore, doesn’t have weird whispers in the back of her mind, and yeah, she’s still lonely with a weird sense of heartbreak on top of it, but she actually _feels_ like herself again.

She puts everything she has into catching up with her coursework that she fell behind in and her professors are pretty lenient with her (they think she just had some kind of freak out at nearly dying. Heather’s just glad to have more flexible due dates so she’s not going to correct them. Not like anyone would believe her about vampires anyway). Heather even follows the advice of her Denim Process Professor and does find a therapist to help her work through her issues and what happened to her (to an extent because again, who’s going to believe her about vampires?).

Her therapist has been really great; she knows she’s lucky to have found one she likes on the first try. Linda has been a big help in figuring out how to deal with her issues and trauma – both the whole nearly dying ordeal and the years of anguish from not dealing with her parents deaths – and Heather feels like she’s somewhere close to being okay, maybe even being happy one day.

Four months after her going off the deep end and she’s doing great; she’s got her grades up, she’s no longer behind, and she’s even made a couple of friends along the way. Every now and then she does get a twinge in the back of her mind, telling her to go find the man, to be near him, but she ignores it easily now.

She hasn’t found herself suddenly in Santa Monica anymore, doesn’t find herself longing as she used to for heterochromatic eyes and the smile that had only ever been kind to her in the way that one is kind to a stranger who is in need of help.

Heather’s learning to move on and to not dwell on the past or what could have been as much as she used to.


	5. Chapter 5

“He’s not the father,” Andy says, pointing to the shorter man on the TV screen, then points to the taller man, "but he is.”

Samantha groans and throws a small handful of popcorn at her friend.

“No using the voices for spoilers!”

Andy gasps in mock offense, hand clutching the left side of his chest, over his dead heart.

“I did no such thing,” he protests, but there’s a grin trying to force its way onto his face. “If you look at the jawlines and their similar body language you’ll see the resemblance and know that I didn’t use the voices.”

Samantha watches for a few moments and yeah, she sees what he’s talking about.

“Alright, I see it. You’re off the hook. This time,” she tells him with a purposefully goofy-serious expression. Andy raises an eyebrow at her and tosses back some of the popcorn she threw at him. Samantha just grins as she pops a piece into her mouth.

It’s been a weird few months, finding out what Andy has been up to since he went missing and coming to terms with the fact that vampires exist and that he is one now, but quite honestly she’s just glad that he really didn’t end up dead in a ditch somewhere.

Apparently Andy wasn’t supposed to tell her and that had resulted in Andy and Nines having a disagreement about it, but it seems like they worked it out and everything’s okay so long as she doesn’t go around talking to anyone and everyone about it.

Not like she would anyway. There’s no way she’d willingly put her best friend in danger like that. She hasn’t even told their friends that she’s found Andy (not like they’d believe her; they’ve already convinced themselves that Andy is dead and gone forever).

She lets her mind wander as she half pays attention to the trashy talk show that’s still playing on the TV until Andy’s voice startles her out of her thoughts.

“Wanna tell me what’s making your mind so loud?” Andy asks without looking away from the TV. She looks at him then looks back to the TV.

“What makes you think that?”

Out of the corner of her eye she can see a faint smile on his face.

“Because we only ever watch ‘Belinda’s Power Hour of Uncomfortable Truths’ when something is bugging one of us, and there aren’t any plaguing thoughts eating me alive. So what’s up?”

Samantha’s nose wrinkles because he’s right and Andy has always known when something is bugging her and his new weird vampire powers have only made him better at that. She kinda doesn’t want to talk about it, but Andy’s already resting his cheek in his hand, elbow propped up on the back of the couch, and looking at her waiting for her to spill the beans.

She sighs and drops her head back against the couch.

“You’re a terrible gossip you know that? I bet your boyfriend doesn’t know how much of a gossip you are,” she grumbles.

Andy laughs but it’s not because of what’s happening on the TV.

“No, he’s already aware. It kind of comes with the territory of what I am now.”

She hums in acknowledgement.

“Yeah, your clan blood or whatever, right? Doesn’t help that you already ate up whatever piece of drama you could hear when you were still human, so it’s no wonder you’re so good at being a creature of the night now.”

“Oh yeah, we creatures of the night stay up late into the day just trading secrets and gossiping. And you’re deflecting.”

Samantha groans and throws some more popcorn at him.

“Threads that have become tangled and knotted. Can’t pull on one without causing more and you’re pulling all of them and then shoving them away. It’s a jumbled mess and will stay that way until you do something about it.”

He’s right, she always overthinks things until they get out of hand and become too much to handle and then she pushes them into a corner of her mind and tries to forget about it, but then she can’t and it always leads to ‘Belinda’s Power Hour of Uncomfortable Truths.’

Samantha takes a deep breath and just focuses and sorting out her thoughts, the noise of the TV helping relax the ball of anxiety in her chest.

“Ah, I see now,” Andy says, a distant look in his eyes, “Flowers growing from his ribs, a rose bush that hasn’t bloomed in years. He wonders why after all this time. He thinks of you and sees thorn-less red roses and linaria bipartita. You should tell him. Then it’ll be ambrosia and red carnations.”

“Maybe. I dunno about all that flowery imagery though.”

“It’s accurate and a good way to express your heart’s desire if words aren’t your forte.”

“Yeah? And what do you see when you think of your _‘heart’s desire?’”_

“Arborvitae, Bellflower, and Lily of the Valley,” he answers without missing a beat.

Samantha lets out a low whistle.

“Wow, you’ve got it bad. In a good way,” she amends.

“So do you,” Andy replies with a grin and Samantha halfheartedly kicks him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here's the flower meanings i used](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_symbolism) i dunno if they're 100% accurate but it's what i'm going with.
> 
> one more chapter y'all


	6. Chapter 6

Louise sat down on one of the many benches within the art gallery with a heavy sigh, her bones weary and her joints cracking and popping with age.

To be quite frank, she was getting far too old to be going to late night events at an art gallery in L.A., but her granddaughter had begged to go and Louise was only in town for so long.

“Go on, sweetie,” she said, “Don’t let me slow you down. I’ll sit here for a bit.”

So Louise sat there, hands resting on top of her cane, with a content smile as she let the soft sounds of the crowd around her lull her into a daydream.

“Your song matches the ribbon,” an unfamiliar says next to Louise.

She opens her eyes and sees a young man sitting next to her, kind mismatched eyes looking at her as if seeing into the depths of her soul. It’s odd to see such old looking eyes in one so young, but looks can be deceiving while also truthful. 

She remembers the old stories, carried from the old lands and passed down, that Tatianna and Alexei had told her during her recovery from plunging into that frozen river all those years ago.

Louise knew with one look at this fae-like young man what he was.

“It matches,” he repeats, his eyes boring into hers. She wouldn’t be surprised if he could see her entire life just by holding eye contact with her. “It matches, but it’s always been off tempo. Just a little bit. The ice swallowed your memories, nearly swallowed you up. In went one girl, out came another. The same yet different.”

“Something like that,” Louise muses, a small smile on her face. “But it was so long ago and the shock of almost dying made it impossible for me to remember.”

“I could help with that,” he says. “There’s someone who’s been waiting to see you for a very long time. He has something of yours, a promise to fulfill, a name to return.”

Louise is intrigued, but says nothing, waiting patiently to see what this fae creature will do.

“Andy, there you are,” a new but familiar voice says. Another young man, but no, that can’t be right… she knows him, knew him, he should be old not young.

Louise can feel tears prickle at the corners of her eyes. She _knows_ him.

“Why’d you want…” the other young man’s voice trails off when he sees her. It’s impossible, but there he is standing before her, older than he was the last time she saw him, but still too young.

“Charlie?” he asks, barely above a whisper.

She grins and she feels like she’s that young girl who posed as a boy so she could get work and send money back to her family all over again.

“Hello, Manolo.”

The fae – no, Andy – gets up from the bench and whispers something in Manolo’s ear, gently resting a hand on her old friend’s shoulder before wandering off into the gallery. She pats the now empty spot next to her and Manolo sits.

“How are you…? I mean, I saw you fall,” Manolo manages to get out.

“I was incredibly lucky,” she tells him. “There had been a couple who happened to be down by the river when I fell into it and were able to fish me out of it.”

Guilt and sadness mars his youthful face at her words.

“I should’ve gone back for you.”

“You could’ve,” she admits, “but I don’t think I would’ve remembered you then. Besides, you found me now.”

Manolo starts, as if suddenly remembering something, and digs through his pocket until he pulls out the blue ribbon she had given to him for safekeeping.

“I’m sorry it took so long to get this back to you, Charlotte. I thought you were dead, but all this time you weren’t and I kept your old life from you.”

She takes the ribbon from him, her boney fingers curling around the soft strip of fabric, wraps her fingers in it and then unwraps them again.

“You didn’t keep me from my life, old friend,” Charlotte says with a soft smile on her face. “I’ve lived and grown old while you’ll stay young always and you were ready to bear an unnecessary guilt for the rest of forever.”

Charlotte uses her old ribbon to tie back her grey hair. She pats Manolo’s hand before standing up.

“It was good to see you again, Manolo, but this is where we must say goodbye,” Charlotte says. There’s a hint of sadness in her voice; she hates that they must part ways after finally being able to see each other once more, but such is life. She is near the end of her days while his stretch on into eternity.

Manolo stands as well and hugs her.

“I’m glad you’re not dead.”

“I’m glad I’m still the better looking one.”

Manolo snorts as he pulls away from her.

“Way to ruin the moment, Charlie.”

“You ruined it first,” she says, falling back into old jokes. “Goodbye, Manolo.”

“Goodbye, Charlotte.”

\---

“So this was why you were so damn insistent on coming here tonight,” Nines says when he finds Andy over by a sculpture he’s not sure could actually be called art.

“Yes,” Andy answers him honestly, “but I also wanted to see what the fuss was about ‘high art,’ but I don’t think I get it.”

“Me either, to be honest,” Nines admits, draping an arm over Andy’s shoulders and leading them out of the art gallery and onto the city streets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm so sorry for taking so long to finish this but this final chapter was fighting me at every turn and i rewrote this so much i've actually lost track. i have mixed feelings about how this chapter turned out, but i'm posting it anyway because if i don't do it now i don't think i'd ever find an ending i would be 100% with for this.
> 
> thank you all for patience with this and for reading!
> 
> (i'll probably come back and edit this at a later date)


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